One More Time
by Siko Kudou
Summary: What if you had another chance to go back? *Schu's POV*
1. End

Hey, hey, hey! Just a few things before proceeding…um, this fic deals with character death…it also deals with reincarnation so, like, if that would offend your religious beliefs, you shouldn't continue. But otherwise, kick back, enjoy and r+r! ^.^

Prologue-End

"Please come back,  
 please come back

_Like all the other ones do..."_

                                          -the Cure, 'the Top'

I remember Brad's screams. They will be forever embedded into my memory. And I know that if I hadn't been drunk on a mission, or if I had a second thought about trying to fight Balinese in my weakened state, maybe I wouldn't have caused Brad so much grief. The sensation of the wire around my neck, tight to cut off my air, that feeling will always stroke past my throat. The colors that flashed in front of my eyes as I could feel darkness taking over will always be there when I close my eyes. And the feeling of release, my final moment of life that was so swiftly jerked away, will always be etched in my mind. I felt nothing, but I could still see and sense what was going on around me. Balinese was gone and Farfello kneeled over me, shaking me, trying to wake me up. Nagi stood a bit behind, staring with concern in those wide eyes of his, trying to process what was happening, not quite believing what he saw.

So I stood and stepped aside, watching the two young men fervently trying to revive the redhead under them. His face was blue and his eyes were open, a fine line of blood creating a collar around his neck because of how tight the wire had been pulled, as if Balinese meant to actually sever his head.

I heard a gasp from behind me and turned to see Brad standing there, motionless, mouth agape. He had been on the front line of the battle and had just arrived back, outside of the colossal corporate building to see what had unfolded in his absence. I watched him closely as his bottom lip had begun to quiver, dark, typically emotionless eyes wavering. He curled both hands into fists and his whole body shook as he stared at the body before him, the one that Farfello and Nagi had backed away from, awaiting their leader's instructions. I wanted to badly to reach out and touch him, to tell him not to cry and I tried. My hand rested solidly on his shoulder and I softly applied pressure to it.

"Brad…"

But he didn't hear me. He just dropped onto his knees beside the shell of my former self and cried. I watched as the tears made trails down his cheeks and nearly silent sobs were admitted from his throat. He leaned down to softly place a kiss on cold lifeless lips and brushed a few locks of hair away so he could softly caress the face, the pain all too evident in his eyes. 

"Schu…Schuldig…I'm sorry, this is all my fault…" 

I gaped and shook my head, brows narrowed and crouched down beside him. 

"This is not your fault, Brad! I did this to my own damn self! Don't blame yourse-"

I stopped as I realized this had no effect. Brad didn't see me or hear me. He had no knowledge of my presence, nor did the others. I was invisible to them, like a shadow. My cheeks felt flushed and I was overcome by a wave of hopelessness. I whispered his name, knowing he couldn't hear me, just wishing that maybe, just maybe, it would work this time. It still proved to be in vain and the American let out a howl of anguish, collapsing onto the body's chest, sobbing into the green blazer, soaking it with tears. I quickly raised my eyes to the others. Nagi's head had dropped, shoulders trembling and I actually saw Farfello look upon me with sadness in his one amber eye. Brad screamed, screamed over and over and people had begun to wander over to see what the commotion was about. The last thing I saw was Brad's face full of guilt and despair, clutching like a child onto my shirt sleeves, face up close to mine, a barely audible whisper echoing in his mind.

'_Don't leave me, Schu…what am I going to do if I lose you?'_

It was at that moment a bright light engulfed me.          


	2. Just A Moment

Hm, just a note. This story has been heavily inspired by the 'Future Songs' cd by the Cranes, cos of it's heavenly sound 'n everythang…anyways, enjoy, the next part is coming soon!

"Here comes the future  
And who knows where it could lead  
Here comes the future  
And who knows where we're gonna be . . .  
  
I look ahead and try my best to see  
A new horizon across the glistening sea  
The days are warmer . . .  
I open my eyes as the sun glows  
Look all around me  
And try to see where the time goes  
  
Because your dreams . . . need help to flow  
You keep them warm . . . they melt like snow  
  
Don't fade out of my life  
Cos I need you now (I need you now)  
We'll get happy when the time is right  
And I need you now . . .  
  
Here comes the future  
And who knows where it could lead  
Here comes the future  
And who knows where we're gonna be . . . ?  
  
You were my dream . . . how could you know?  
You never dreamed I'd tell you so . . .  
  
Where do our spirits go?  
Where do our heartbeats go?  
Where do our best dreams go?  
I try but I don't know . . .  
  
Don't fade out of my life  
Cos I need you now  
It's like the seeds need sun and rain to grow  
And I need you now . . ."

                                                                         -the Cranes 'Future Song'

My thoughts were being ripped one by one out of my head like someone tearing pages from a book. All I could see was blinding white light that made me strain my eyes. It seemed like I was descending and moving upward at the same time, impossible to tell even if I really tried. It felt as if my body had detached itself from me and was just dropping away. I tore through the light, but despite the speed and forcefulness I was still slowly and calmly floating. My head swam as the thoughts that had seemingly been removed were being swirled all around like they were in a blender making me dizzy as it spun. Now what happened next is somewhat hard to explain. Ahead, on either side of me, like a movie playing, memories flew by in rows that my eyes were desperately trying to catch. I saw a little redheaded German boy wandering around the streets with no home, no family. Then I saw myself at Rosen Kreuz…I saw the day I met Brad. Then the next ones were just of him and I, talking, laughing, making love, every single solitary thing I could remember and had forgotten was being shown before my eyes. I sighed and tried to close my eyes. But I couldn't, it was like I had no lids. I could feel my body breaking away, chipping off me like eggshells. I raised my hand and found that it was gone, all that there was light…I had become part of the light…I was absorbed by it.

                                 All kinds of scents filled my nostrils and while they were familiar, they were still impossible to identify. If there was a way I could describe them…it would probably be purity, if purity had a smell. I had barely noticed when the white light had begun to dissipate and give way to a barrage of brilliant colors. Bright pinks, blues, oranges, purples and every color imaginable spun around me, enveloping me in the warmth of the rainbow being creating before me. It was only then that I noticed something. I had been motionless the whole time. There were never any ups or downs or spinning, it was all in my head. Upon lifting my hand once more, I found that it was still intact. Clothes no longer covered my body and I was completely naked, not that it really mattered anymore. And that was when it hit me.

'I'm dead.'

It was like a slap in the face…and it meant that this was the inevitable end. This meant no more sleeping in past 12, no more cigarettes, no more Brad. This meant I'd never see him again and I couldn't handle that, not with the pain in his eyes or the sobs that were racking my body now. Before I'd figured that when you died you were dead and memories of loved ones didn't just follow you into the afterlife. So why was I thinking about Brad and on the verge of tears? I slowly raised my eyes to see that the swirling colors were slowly fading to give way to a pale white that held a faint glow.   


	3. Is This Heaven?

Errrrrrr, part 3. I'm scaring myself with this fic…

It felt like hours before the mist around me died down and I was left standing in pure white. White that hurt my eyes as far as I could see that I wanted to push through, yet I barely had control of my body anymore. What was under my feet felt like solid ground, but it still seemed as if I was floating on nothingness. And that was what was around me. Just imagine every single building, tree, person and color around you all suddenly bleached white so that you couldn't even discern what had been there before. I stood inside the blank pages of a paper on which a story had yet to be written. There was the most undistinguishable breeze circling around my body and the air seemed new and untainted. I sucked in a breath and my whole body was suddenly overcome with a cold, bracing sensation all throughout, making me shiver and clench my teeth against it. 

Then I heard something. It was a feminine whisper from somewhere around me. It was impossible to tell what it was saying, but there was no question that it was directed toward me. There was a figure coming toward me in the distance, all in white. As it neared, I could make out that it was female, a young girl who looked like she couldn't have been older than 16 with a calm expression playing over her face. Her hair was a long flowing mass of silk, dark brown in color that floated about her face, making it look as if she were underwater. Her eyes were a painfully bright blue and seemed to be almost too large for her face. Lashes played spider-like over her cheeks and her skin was a milky white, contrasting intensely to her dark hair. She wore a simple sleeveless white dress, fit but loose and hovering above her ankles, barely covering her shoeless feet. She was walking, almost gliding nearer to me as her dress made waves around her legs and her hair still floated about her head. 

I was speechless at the sight of this girl and I almost had the urge to back away, intimidated by her presence. She smiled at me and when she had gotten close enough, she took my hand into hers and held it. As she did this, it seemed as if the cold that had assaulted my body before was being drawn out and replaced with a reassuring warmth. I closed my eyes and let the feeling take me over as she continued to hold my hand.

"Is this heaven?" I heard myself ask.

"No." came the childlike voice, and she gently let go of my hand. I looked up at her to see how close she stood to me now, her hair gracefully falling to her sides.

"Is this purgatory?"

"This is neither heaven nor purgatory."

I blinked in confusion at this. I had died, hadn't I?

"Well…where am I then?"

She smiled at my naivety and gestured toward the white surrounding us.

"You're just on another plane." she answered softly, "The highest plane."

"I don't understand…what do you mean by planes?"

"It's another level of life. As you left another one, you came here…this is the highest plane, like what you would think of as heaven."

"But why would *I* be sent to the highest plane? All my life I've been guilty."

She shook her head and calmly ran her palm over my cheek, caressing. 

"It doesn't matter how you are born, what matters are your actions in the course of your lifetime."

"I was a killer, though. I don't belong here." I insisted.

"Sometimes the power of a good action can overshadow that of a multiple of bad ones."

I still didn't understand.

"I never did any good deeds, I was never a good person once in my life!"

"You loved someone. You purely, honestly and unselfishly loved another person. That's the greatest thing someone could ever do." 

I stopped another protest and just nodded before slumping down to my knees, head bowed. So I loved another person then. Resting my palms on what felt like a cold marble floor under me, I bit my lip to keep my tears back, but I was unsuccessful and I sat before her, weeping. She stood for a moment, just watching me before dropping to her own knees and taking my face into her hands.

"Do you see how far your love has remained, how long it's lasted? You cry for him even after death…"

I weakly nodded and wiped my eyes then looked back up at her, still shaking.

"What am I going to do? I…I just can't accept this! I can't leave him by himself like this!"

She only sighed and stroked my hair, cradling my head in her arms.

"We all have to leave behind someone sometime, even those that we cherish above all else…"

"No…" I whispered, pulling away, "It can't end like this. I won't let it."

I stood and looked down at her, sucking in a breath.

"There has to be a way for me to go back."

She stood as well and averted my gaze, holding her arms.

"You have to accept what's happened. You need to accept that you and he are now on different planes of existence and that is how the course of destiny has chosen it. If you go back, you would disrupt his destiny. He could be meant to meet and fall in love with someone else, be happy, have a family and die peacefully. He could be killed next year or in 2 days. There are so many things that could be meant to happen to him and that's how it should be kept. Maybe you were meant to die to help him become more openly emotional, who knows. Either way, altering someone's future can have positive and negative effects."

"…I realize that. But if I could go back, I'd make sure that he was happy and I would take care of him…"

"You realize you couldn't go back in your original form, right?" 


	4. Voices

Um, yah, this chapter doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but I promise that it's not as confusing as Lain! ^^;; Anyway, as always, enjoy and r+r!

_//'Do you think about me?'_

_'Every waking moment.'_

_'Well, stop.'_

_'Why?'_

_'You need to forget about me…move on with your life.'_

_'I could never forget about you.'_

_'…'_

_'Are you ever coming back?'_

_'…I don't know. I don't know how to answer that now.'_

_'Are you?'_

_'I don't know.'_

_'I miss you…'_

_'…'_

_'Where are you now?'_

_'Judging on what I've been told, I guess that it would be the equivalent of heaven.'_

_'Hn, to think that you, of all people, could end up in a place like heaven.'_

_'Ironic, isn't it…?'_

_'Are you happy where you are now?'_

_'No.'_

_'Why?'_

_'…I miss you.'//_

Crawford awoke at 2 am in the morning to a slight draft in the bedroom that he now slept alone in. Groaning, he rubbed his eyes and climbed out of bed to close the small window. Once his task was completed, he turned around and was about to go lie back down, but was stopped by the sight of the empty space on the bed. His face dropped and he sighed, leaning against the sill. How long had it been since Schu had died? Over a year by now, though it seemed so much more recent. So many people had told him that he needed to move on, to realize that the German wasn't coming back but it was something he couldn't accept. And what did these recurring dreams mean? During the past 2 months the same dream came and though it was relatively uneventful, it was intense nonetheless, making him wake up covered in sweat and feel his heart beating a million miles a minute. 

_//'Why don't you come back?'_

_'It's not that simple.'//_

So many mornings he would wake up and expect a tangle of red hair to be strewn across his chest and in his ears the soft, steady breathing of his lover. And when he'd reach to take him in his arms, there wouldn't be another body, just cold stale air. And so many mornings he, Brad Crawford, would lay in bed and just cry, wishing for the warmth of another body against his own. He slowly made his way over to the closet they once, and still in some morbid way, shared to reveal a mixture of both Crawford and Schu's clothes neatly hanging up as if they'd never been touched. At first Nagi insisted that they get rid of Schu's clothes, but upon a second thought he realized that they probably had some sentimental value to Crawford and wasn't at all hesitant to drop the subject. 

_//'Why do you still have my clothes?'_

_'Because they give me comfort.'_

_'Why?'_

_'It makes it seem as if you're still here.'//_

He pulled out Schu's obligatory green blazer and held it to his chest with a grip of iron, pretending that the telepath was still inside of it and he was holding him like he'd never let go. Even after all this time, the younger man's scent still lingered in the fabric and Crawford buried his face in it, pretending that it was Schu's neck, twining his fingers around the collar as if it was his hair.    

//'You're living in the past.' 

_'But I won't let myself forget about you.'_

_'Do you know what that's like for me? I don't want to cause you anymore grief than I already have…'_

_'But thinking of you is the only thing that keeps me going anymore.'_

_'I don't want to have to shatter your hopes but…'//_

Heaving in a heavy sigh, he returned back to the bed and lay on his side, just staring at the empty spot next to his own that he still couldn't bring himself to lie in. Because it was still reserved. 


	5. Distortions

~*~Schu~*~

I would have laid there for days had the chill of ice not made its way down my spine. It seemed like years since I had been in that other plane of existence, but taking an educated guess I figured it to have been only minutes. My eyes fluttered open to white that surrounded me and upon closer inspection I found it to be cold and somewhat solid.

Snow.

I groaned and rolled on my back, looking toward the harsh grey sky that loomed overhead as white fell and settled onto my face. What had happened in those few minutes that I didn't remember? And what did she mean about not being able to come back as myself? My eyes flitted over to my right, something else grey swimming into my vision. Everything around me was a blur and wherever I was, the place was shrouded in an eerie calm. I sneezed when a few snowflakes landed on my nose and then sat up, rubbing my eyes. I looked back at whatever the grey thing I had seen before. It was an angel. I reached out to brush my hand across her cheek only to find that it was deathly cold. That's when I looked down and realized what I had been lying on.

There was stone under me and I shifted off of it and kneeled beside of it. I stared around and found myself to be surrounded by graves, all seeming to glare at my presence. What would I be doing in a cemetery? I looked back down at the slab that I lay atop before and now realized that it was blank, there was no inscription, no name.

_/'What is the significance of this?'/_

That was when I touched my fingers to it and my mind was barraged by countless images, so many memories, thoughts and feelings. I screamed as the intrusion ripped through my brain but I couldn't take my hand from the slab. I saw myself die and Brad over me, crying. I saw his sleepless nights and felt his feelings and thoughts.

_/'Schu, I miss you…'/_

And then I realized I was back. I was no longer dead. A strange sense of fear and anxiousness filled me as I rose to my feet. Where was I going to go from here? I looked down to see that I was wearing a black duster, a wool shirt, jeans and a pair of heavy black boots. I had no idea where they came from but I was thankful for their warmth against the biting cold. I pulled the duster tighter to myself and started on my way.

~*~

It was hours before I arrived in Tokyo and everything seemed so much more intimidating than it once did. Neon lights flash all around and everyone was rushing to go to and from various locations, I only floating among them with no real destination. I remembered when I felt that I had ruled these streets and sidewalks when I strutted about them so haughtily with my smug grin. I felt that I had owned the city and now it was so ironic to feel this small in one of the least busy of districts. Someone shoved past me and I stopped only to be shoved by yet another person. Glaring, I chose to sit on a nearby bench and gather my composure. But as soon as I sat down, yet another shock came to me in the form of a store's window. The reflection in the large glass window of the clothing store wasn't my own. It lacked my honey colored skin and flaming mass of red hair. The man that stared back at me was as pale as the snow that still fell and his hair was a bright bluish-purple that glinted in the lights that blazed about me. His mouth was small and his features delicate and feminine. I lifted my hand to observe long white fingers that had an almost spider-like quality to them. The only things still intact from my old self were my eyes. The green eyes that bore into so many people's minds were still there and it was a relief. At least I knew that the old me wasn't completely gone. The problem facing me now was that whenever I did meet up with Brad, how would he know that it was really his dead lover? It wasn't as simple as going up to him and telling him who I really was before leaping into his arms. I sighed and buried my face in my hands…this was going to be hard. There was the sound of something dropping snapped me out of my daze and I could feel eyes on me. So I slowly lifted my head to find myself looking into sapphire eyes. The owner was staring at me wide-eyed, a few paper bags with food in them lying fallen at his feet. An orange rolled from one, so I quickly grabbed it from the ground and held it out to the boy before me, a 16-year-old Naoe Nagi to be exact. This was definitely a chance meeting.

He shook his head and blushed slightly, taking it from me.

"G-gomen nasai! I didn't mean to stare or anything. I really don't know what came over me!" he sputtered and I smiled softly at him.

"S'ok. Do you need help carrying your bags? They look like they're a little much for you."             

He looked slightly shocked by my offer for a minute before nodding and handing me one bag.

"Thanks…I really appreciate it. No one's ever offered to help me before." He smiled and continued walking as I followed. "By the way, my name's Naoe Nagi." I resisted the urge to tell him that I knew and replied with a quiet 'Hn.' He waited a minute before speaking again. "So…what's your name?" I paused, dumbfounded at the question. I couldn't tell him my name was Schuldig, who knew how he'd react to that…

"Lars…just call me Lars.*" 

"…you're German."

"That's right…Nagi. Could I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Why were you staring at me in shock like that before?" he was silent for a few seconds before sighing.

"You just reminded me of someone I used to know." He shook his head with a sad smile, looking back at me. "Just don't worry about it."

But I could tell by the look in his eyes he knew deep in the recesses of his mind. I didn't need telepathy to see that he was silently playing along. Was it my eyes that gave it away? The rest of the walk back to the apartment was in silence as the anticipation steadily built inside of me, knowing that Brad would be at our destination and imagining how he react to my presence, something telling me he'd know.  

*^^;; Inspired by Lars Frederikson, from Rancid and Lars Frederikson and the Bastards, which both kick ass!


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